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Saturday, December 04, 2010

I've been following Rick Macomber on Twitter (boston_camera) for a month or so; though we'd never met and I can't even remember how I came to follow him. But last week he tweeted that he would be shooting a music video of a local band, Air Traffic Controller, and was looking for people willing to volunteer to crew the shoot. On a whim I dropped him a note and said I was interested in covering it for the blog, and he said 'come on down!' or words to that effect.

Rick is a broadcast news photojournaliat with WBZ TV Boston, but for side projects he's been exploring HDSLR filmmaking. A musician himself, Rick first met Dave Munro of Air Traffic Controller through an open mic that Dave's brother Jeff runs in Malden. Rick has produced, directed and edited four videos for ATC. The other videos were shot using a Canon HV40, but this video, "Brightest Moon," was shot using a Canon T2i with 17-50mm f2.8 lens.

The video was shot at 60 fps with Dave lip syncing the song at double speed, then slow mo was added in post by conforming the video to 30 fps in Cinema Tools to create a fluid dream-like effect. The video was edited in Final Cut Pro with color grading with Magic Bullet Looks.

The video was actually a reshoot; in the previous attempt they had some audio playback issues and the audio wasn't loud enough for the singer to get the words right.

I met Rick and the crew of four down at a park on Soldiers Field Road late Sunday afternoon. The shot consisted of one long take of Dave walking along a path, with the other band members - Brent Selby Kiara Ana Perico Wendy Mittelstadt and Merrick Nelson - making appearances as Dave walked along. The first hour was spent figuring out where to place everyone and practicing. Rick operated the camera on a Glidecam with a vest, walking backwards while Jim Akimchuk guided him and also held a small key light. Crew Cameron Robbins and Chris Loughran operated two Husky LED work lights to light both Dave and the other band members, while Dan Buckley handled audio playback. Billy Lawler handled audio playback on the previous shoot.

In total they shot twelve complete takes over the course of a couple of hours, with the best one being chosen for the final video.

One last note; I was really intrigued by the Husky work lights they were using. They cost about $60 at Home Depot and feature 180 individual lights and operate on internal battery for three or four hours. For this purpose they pumped out plenty of light, and I'm wondering if they'd make a useful light kit for interviews; quite a bit of light without the power and heat issues you get from traditional lighting kits.

Friday, December 03, 2010

Tuesday, December 7th - 11:00 AM PDT
A discussion on making your digital archive profitable and accessible today and in the future.
From production to consumption it is essential to identify and capitalize on what is in YOUR digital archive.

A couple of weeks ago, Amazon rolled out Amazon Studios, which they describe as "21st-century technology creating ways to make and share movies and scripts more easily than ever." Amazon Studios is notable because Amazon said that they would be giving away money to prize winning scripts and movie ideas. It must have hit something of a nerve as they say that "more than a thousand scripts" have already been uploaded.

But not everyone thinks it's such a good idea. Jesse Harris, Filmmaker and Executive Director of NFFTY, National Film Festival for Talented Youth, describes it as a PR stunt and an insult to writers and directors:

Here’s the fine print, and what makes this so shady. First, Amazon Studios isn’t funding great ideas, they are asking for them for free. If you submit a script or “test movie” as they are calling it, you give Amazon an exclusive 18-month option for your project without any pay. Meaning you can’t pitch or sell your idea to anyone else during that 18-month period. If Amazon decides to option it, you could get up to $200,000, but most likely not.

Oh and if they like your test movie and want to re-make it into a fully funded film, they can take your project to Hollywood and kick you out as the director. They say this on their site.

Screenwriter John August doesn't like that others can rewrite your script:

The idea that an undiscovered screenwriter in Wichita will rewrite someone else’s screenplay on his own time seems far-fetched, and to me smacks of spec labor.

Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker Magazine's initial reaction:

... is one of disappointment that the potential radicalism of a large-scale crowdsourced development system is being used to simply generate ideas for exploitation by a studio and one of the richest companies on the planet.

Scott then had a discussion with director Jim McKay, and Jim's take on it is interesting, because he doesn't really think this is aimed at the filmmaker community, but at non-filmmakers who "have nothing to compare the scale of the contractual agreements to, and they will just be happy to get chosen." Jim goes on to talk about movies he was involved with that he has lost control of - and yet he went through the traditional film route. He concludes:

So I don’t really disagree with what you’re saying here — I just think, like the Paramount Justin Beiber division, it’s probably not going to amount to anything significant for real indie filmmakers anyway, so it’s better to focus our energies elsewhere….

I stand by my original comment "if you've been unable to get notice anywhere else, this might be an opportunity to get your name out there." If you have an idea you're heavily invested in, you probably don't want to offer it up to Amazon Studios, but if you're trying to get noticed, putting something together on spec may make sense.

Thursday, December 02, 2010

Everyone's been wondering what the XF100 & XF105, the little brothers to the XF300/XF305 would get priced at, and now we know; the XF100 is listing at $3,299.95 and the XF105 at $4,299.95 at B & H with an expected arrival of January. At the moment you can't pre-order.

This is slightly under the $4,000 and $5,000 price mentioned back at the Canon New York show.

Small and light, these cameras are particularly interesting because they record with 4:2:2 color sampling, though they only have 1/3" sensors. They would make a good B camera to the XF300/XF305, and might be useful for 3D work.

Tokina Vs. Canon
Jared Abram takes a look at the Tokina 28-80mm f2.8 Vs. the Canon 24-70 f2.8 as well as the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 L IS vs the Tokina 80-200mm f2.8. The Canons seemed to be a bit sharper than the Tokinas. The Tokina had a cooler/blue looking lens flare to my eye where the Canon was much warmer/yellow.
I'm guessing the Tokina's are new, as I can't find them listed at Amazon or B & H.Vimeo: Quick Take: Tokina Vs. Canon Zooms

Zacuto Z-FinderEVF
Zacuto has been leaking out information about their upcoming EVF viewfinder in drips and drabs - actually, it's almost like we're sitting in on the design process. The latest video goes into the ergonomics of the design.Zacuto: Z-FinderEVF

STORM Open BetaThe Foundry has launched an open beta of their new digital cinema camera workflow product, STORM, developed to assist RED Digital Cinema production workflows.
The STORM beta is FREE to use until the 1st March 2011. It requires a MacBook Pro, Mac Pro or iMac with at least 2GB RAM running OSX 10.6.4 or later. STORM is optimised for RED R3D footage and will use a RED ROCKET card if one is installed.The Foundry: STORM

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Effective December 6, 2010, Canon will start to provide as a chargeable service, a locking mode dial modification for the “EOS 5D MarkII” and “EOS 7D” digital single-lens reflex cameras.

For USA residents, the pricing of the locking mode dial modification service for EOS 5D Mark II and 7D cameras has been set at $100 per camera as of December, 2010. (Pricing and availability subject to change without notice.)

Once modified, users must first press and hold down the central lock-release button in order to turn the Mode Dial. The modification is intended to prevent the Mode Dial from accidentally moving, once set to a particular exposure mode by the user.

Lightworks Public BetaBack in May EditShare announced that their editing program Lightworks was going Open Source. They then had a private beta program, but now the public beta has opened.
Lightworks is an Academy and Emmy award winning professional-grade editor with over 20 years of history in the film and broadcast industry. Having cut hundreds of films such as Pulp Fiction, The Departed, Centurion and Shutter Island, it includes a full feature set of editorial tools, from advanced trimming and media management, through to stereoscopic support and realtime effects including multiple secondary colour correctors. Lightworks has an advanced effects pipeline, utilizing the power of your GPU. And with support for up to 2K workflows with realtime effects, it is the most advanced editing application available.Lightworks beta program

Post Production on "The Social Network"
Adobe has posted two short videos that cover how After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro were used in post-production on The Social Network.tv.adobe.comPart 1tv.adobe.comPart 2

Plotting Your Script
Story and Script consultant Martha Alderson discusses the importance of plot and character goals:

A good movie plot and story plot that involves a goal with antagonists standing in the way also requires one more goal element. The protagonist must stand to lose something important if he is not successful at achieving his long-term goal. The more substantial the potential loss, the higher the stakes.

Panasonic AG-AF100 Test Video
Footage from the Panasonic AF100 camera directed and shot by Leo Ticheli of Leo Ticheli Productions. Camera gamma was set to HD Norm, with knee and chroma adjusted per shot. Lenses used were almost exclusively Zeiss Standard Speed T2.1 lenses, with apertures ranging per shot except where noted. Also, a few of the extreme low light shots were made with the Panasonic Lumix Pancake 20mm F1.7. All footage was recorded at 1080p @ 23.98. This was edited in Final Cut Pro 7.0.3 as Apple Pro Res HQ files.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

The Sound and Music of "The Social Network"
In this 45-minute panel discussion, moderated by Bruce Carse, music composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are joined by sound re-recording mixer, supervising sound editor Ren Klyce to discuss their work on David Fincher’s The Social Network.
http://soundworkscollection.com/socialnetworkpanelSoundWorksCollection: THE SOUND AND MUSIC OF “THE SOCIAL NETWORK”

1920x1080 60p
Think you can only get 60p from a DSLR? The Panasonic HDC-TM700K will shoot 60p....at 1920 x 1080. This nice little video shows what you can do by shooting at 60p and slowing it down to 24p.

If you're looking to slow down video, this might be a nice choice; video looks good BUT you don't get the shallow depth of field you can get with the right DSLR lens/settings. Camcorderinfo seems to really like Panasonic's offerings - and this camera - though some users have complained about the audio being marred by the noisy camera, and average low-light performance.

There's been a lot of buzz surrounding the TM700's 1080/60p record mode, and rightfully so. The mode records at a very high bitrate and it produced some of the finest video images we've ever seen from a consumer camcorder. The big downside, however, is that the TM700's 60p mode isn't compatible with most [current] editing programs.-Camcorderinfo

Far be it from me to tell you what your priorities should be, but to me, spending three bills to have a $900 TV calibrated seems as silly installing a $10,000 Viking range a 30,000 mobile home. Does this harsh nancial reality leave TV bargain hunters at the mercy of the factory calibration? Absolutely not — at least not those bargain hunters are willing to spend a few bucks on a calibration disc and a few minutes reading the rest of this article.

Over the 13 years that I have worked in the production industry, there has been a noticeable trend of production budgets getting smaller and smaller. This is the case across TV production, commercials, music videos and corporates.

Duke's new program: Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts

Covering a swath of artistic disciplines, the MFA’s proposal mentions “large-format photography, writing, web data mining, spoken word, nanoscale computing, audio and 16mm film” as some of the possible means of production, directed toward creating “powerful new works that engage and interrogate the world we live in.”

Monday, November 29, 2010

Last week Jan Crittenden-Livingston & Bernie Mitchell from Panasonic made an appearance at Rule Camera Boston, talking about the forthcoming AG-AF100. Rule has posted a video of the two-hour event (see below), and for those considering buying (or renting) this camera, the video is particularly instructive.

Crittenden-Livingston has been with Panasonic for 24 years, the last 9 as a product manager, and she described the AG-AF100 as something that had been "designed from the ground up." But while it sounded as though the US division had some involvement in the initial design, they didn't really know what the camera was going to do until they got the manual for it (which had only arrived the week before.) Prior to that, they had to figure out what the camera did by playing with it and clicking the buttons!

Some interesting information:

The different model numbers are used to indicate where support belongs. The 100 is a US warranty number. There’s a 105 which is a Japanese number.

Four Third and Micro Four Third uses the same size image sensor. The Four Thirds system is based on an SLR design. The Micro Four Third's system removes the mirror and moves the lens closer to the imager

Because of the flange-back depth of the Micro Four Third's mount, you can put virtually any lens on it

A 35mm still lenses will have double the focal length (X2) on Micro Four Third's so a 100mm will be 200mm

The imager is sealed, so you don’t need dust off!

The imager has 12.4 million pixels

It has uncompressed audio in it's best mode

Comes with a three-year warranty

They DON'T see this as an ENG camera

Use of an Optical Lowpass Filter reduces aliasing and moiré

Has a still capture function that you can assign to any of the three user buttons. You can capture while you’re recording video, but it’s not 12 million pixels

HDMI is always active. If you want to have the viewfinder and the LCD active, turn off the SDI output

The battery is the same battery as the one used by the AVCcam cameras

XLR jacks are line/mic switchable with phantom power

Spotmeter; you can move the spotmeter around the image and figure out the luminance of that particular spot

Face detection only works on those lenses that have full conversation and the ability built-in

Built in optical neutral density filters: 2, 4 and 6 stops

Different aspect ratio marking in the viewfinder

There is a pre-record option; 3 seconds in HD

You can remove all the handles to reduce size or customize

Comes with a wireless remote

Weight without the lens is about 2 and a half pounds

The resolution of the LCD 994,000 pixels. The viewfinder is 1.2 million pixels

The cameras are leaving the factory starting around the 18th, and hopefully in everybodies hands by 27th

Another interesting thing about the camera is that it has a video and a film mode. In video mode, Shutter speed is in fractions of a second and Sensitivity is in dB, while in Film mode, Shutter speed is in degrees and Sensitivity is in ISO.

The following are some quotes from the presentation.

I saw a lot of our customers taking our cameras and putting 35mm adapters on the front end to get that shallow depth of field, and then I saw some customers buying DSLRs and then I started hearing all the complaints about the DSLRs because there’s a lot of work-arounds that you have to do.

We basically pulled about 30 people from all walks of the production arena […] and we brought them into a big room, and we had little Styrofoam blocks, and [asked] how do you want this and where do you want the viewfinder? And over the course of three or four weeks we gathered about 400 ideas, and then tried to gell those down into something viable, and usable, because of course everybody wanted an Alexa for $5,000.

Is it a DSLR killer? If all you have is $2,500 to spend, that’s all you spend. You don’t kill it with a $5,000 camera.

The cool part about the camera is that it doesn’t have aliasing or moiré.

Does it have all the same properties of rolling shutter that CMOS sensors have been known to do? Quite frankly, it really is very, very good. It doesn’t seem to give me that skew. It does have one remaining artifact and that’s true for any CMOS imager, and that is the flash band. This will do a flash band just like any other CMOS imager, but the good news; you can fix that in post.

The Cine-like D [Scene File] givers you the greatest dynamic range, but the cruel news is that it will blow out the high-lights, if you don’t control your exposure. With Cine-like D you want to underexpose by half a stop and that way you can bring it back in post.

Dynamic Range Stretch [is available] in all modes. It goes in to the shadows and pulls up what’s going on there, but doesn’t blow out the highlights.
If you think more is better, that is not what DRS is all about. If you use it, it has to have something to do. If it doesn’t have something to do, the only think it’s going to do is make the image noisy. I had a filmmaker in the more-is-better mode, turn it on, and more than half of his footage was unusable.

Relay Recording [automatically switches] from one card to the next. [Creating] a spanned clip. If you don’t want to do that, you can just put in one chip. It will also tell you how long is left and you can manually switch to the second card.

A lot of people are coming to AVCHD and the only experience that you’ve had is by looking at the video recorded on the 5D or the 7D or maybe even our own GH1, and you think you know what AVCHD looks like. But that’s not true, you don’t. Because there is no standard of implementation of the [compression] codec; [only] in the playback. So when you start looking at AVCCAM, Panasonics implementation. We have bi-directional frames, I-frames, we have predictive frames, bi-diretional frames, predictive frames, and what that means is, the codec itself is content adaptive.
[...] So even at 40 mbits, like on the 5D, doesn’t even come close to what 24 mbits can do in this camera.

AVCCAM outperforms XDCAM EX in some situations; particularly when it gets stressed.

Are we looking at making a set of lenses? No. There are so many lenses out there, it seems like reinventing the wheel.

[We do] have a couple of lenses that do auto-focusing. [But] some of the Lumix auto-focusing lenses are a little noisey, and you might find them unacceptable.

There is a manufacturer in Massachusetts that’s making an adapter for the Canon EOS lenses. They are hoping to have that delivered at the same time as the camera; don’t ask me whether or not it is going to honor and respect all of the communications within the camera, but it will go on there and you will be able to utilize the iris function.

[There are] lots of adapters, but look for the source. I bought one, it came from China, and the build quality was just totally cheesy.

Olympus 4/3 lenses: Iris works, but the rest of the stuff doesn’t work. Auto-focus does not function; they use a different language to control their lenses.

[The camera doesn't offer an expanded focus mode] It has color and peaking, and it does a focus bar. What they would have to do [to add expanded focusing] is put a lot more memory into it. Because on that expanded focus, you take the part of the chip and expand. That would assume that you’re actually using the chip for the picture. I’m not. I’m using the Optical low-pass filter that’s on the output of the chip, so I’ve now rolled off some of that high-frequency. […] Taking the chip set and blowing it up would just get my focus wrong.

It's often forgotten that George Lucas didn't direct The Empire Strikes Back, arguably the best of the Star Wars series.

I think it went beyond 'Star Wars'. You had some humor, you got to know the characters a little better. I saw it as the second movement in an opera. That's why I wanted some of the things slower. And it ends in a way that you can't wait to see or to hear the vivace, the allegretto. I didn't have a climax at the end. I had an emotional climax.- Irvin Kershner

Canon XF305
The XF305 has been out for a while (the big brother to the forthcoming XF100/105's) but Bruce Johnson at Provideo Coalition posted a review of it a couple of weeks back.

All new products should work this well right out of the gate. The XF305 is available now for a street price of $7499 (if you don’t need HDSDI, time code or genlock, the XF300 runs $6499.) Are there things I’d change? Sure, main among them the 1/3” chipset - you really miss the depth of field control you get with 2/3” or even 1/2” chips - but on the whole, the XF305 is one hot piece of gear. Great controls and LCD panel, excellent battery life, reasonably priced media (especially compared to P2 or SxS cards,) stable workflow and beautiful high-bitrate pictures add up to a package that makes a very worthy successor to the Canon cameras that came before it.

Video On Demand DistributionFilmmaking Stuff posts an interview with David Allen from Rapidfire Productions, an Australian company that develops, produces and distributes their genre specific titles through their own distribution arm.

There is such a valuable lesson to be learned here especially with the social networking explosion on the Internet… Success is all about the relationships both online and offline.
[...]
In my opinion this is the key to being successful in offline and online business and film distribution. Over time your followers will come to trust you and believe you, so when you have something to sell they will be far more likely to buy because they feel like they know and trust you.

The Hobbit will be amongst the first productions in the world to use the EPIC and at least thirty cameras will be required by the 3-D production. The EPIC'S small size and relatively low weight, makes it perfect for 3-D - where two cameras have to be mounted on each 3D rig.

Jackson has a long history with RED, dating back to when he directed the short film 'Crossing the Line' as a very early test of prototype RED ONE cameras. "I have always liked the look of Red footage." he says, "I'm not a scientist or mathematician, but the image Red produces has a much more filmic feel than most of the other digital formats. I find the picture quality appealing and attractive, and with the Epic, Jim and his team have gone even further. It is a fantastic tool, the Epic not only has cutting edge technology, incredible resolution and visual quality, but it is also a very practical tool for film makers. Many competing digital systems require the cameras to be tethered to large cumbersome VTR machines. The Epic gives us back the ability to be totally cable free, even when working in stereo."